Category: Uncategorized

FootPrints, a National Level Technical Event annually. Commemorating its enigmatic journey of 17 years, FootPrints has now arrived at the threshold of its much awaited 18th year. Since its inception in 2001, FootPrints is rendering a platform to young minds all over the country. Our next edition, FootPrintsX8 is scheduled on 23rd, 24th and 25th of February, 2018. Year after year, FootPrints is striving towards new pinnacles of success. Every year visionary students from every corner of India expand their horizons, giving impetus to their diligent Innovations and inventive visions.

FootPrints is about bringing a lot of college students at one stage to learn, compete and enjoy more. They have a huge offline marketing and promotional team which goes to various colleges since two months before the fest starts. Mozilla always teaches around 150 participants every year and this time there were 137 participants.

These were the Mozillians who helped in running this event very smoothly.

Day One

I reached the venue to set up the booth at around 9 AM and was shortly joined with Sohail. Before even properly setting up, I had opened my laptop flap open and a bunch of students who were passing by noticed the Mozilla logo to ask what is Mozilla doing here? I mentioned the booth and the workshop for which they got really excited. I asked them if they knew what Mozilla was, and they replied, it’s Firefox and I had to correct them which lead to more people joining in for a 20-minute conversation. They couldn’t get a seat at the workshop, unfortunately since the registrations were closed by then.

While this was happening, HariOm arrived and joined Sohail to set up the booth. He had come from all the way to Ahmedabad which is why he was a tad bit late. I was expecting Miten to be there sooner but I called him and got the news of him being stuck in a different city altogether. Other volunteers had informed me prior to the first day that they were going to unavailable for one reason or the other(most of them were doing awesome work somewhere else!).

The booth was decorated with the posters we had made for the MakerFest and we are so happy to have made those earlier because it wasn’t going to be easy for us to make those with our own hands. Huge shout-out to the people who helped us making those in MF’17 and MF’18 in Ahmedabad. We had many visitors and interacted with a lot of people in that heat.

That was the end of the booth on Day One, as we parted ways to meet the next day.

I arrived at the Guest House at midnight, since I wanted to receive Prathamesh, Shahbaz and Shina. I had met Prathamesh Sir at the MakerFest(#CouncilWaaleSir) and he was more than happy to have gotten the invitation to interact with more Mozilla Gujarat volunteers. I had met Shahbaz Bhaii earlier and had been in touch with him since MF’17. He was more than happy to top-up VR with AR. I hadn’t met Shina before, but she was starting with WebVR and was happy to come since our community has no female VR contributors and we needed someone to reach out to them.

Day Two

A very friendly and sweet Frankie a.k.a Ram Dayal a.k.a Maahir(This is the real name!) called Prathamesh Sir to wake up so that we could go ahead and reach on time for the workshop. We reached around 9:30, and started right away with Mozilla, Open Source and the basics of VR, and what is A-Frame. Apart from the Prathamesh, Shina, Shahbaz, it was me, Sohail, Miten, HariOm and Yahya, who were at the venue, taking care of the event process.

The speakers called lunch at 11:30.

“Chicken!”, cried the stomachs of a few who were going, except Miten. He is a vegetarian. We all departed for Nosh Faarmaiyen for some Mughlai and Avadhi delecacies, which is where a conversation was sparked about how Chickens and Vegetarians are harmful for the planet. Miten, the only vegetarian there could not make a valid case for them but you can comment on the blog if you can help him out because we certainly proved it to him. 😛

We ate a lot! Shahbaz Alam hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and I hadn’t eaten since more than 24 hours. The eating took a lot of time, we reached at the workshop around 1PM. Prathamesh Sir and Shahbaz Sir went and hit the spots right away by explaining how the tags work, how the JS link works, everything on Glitch. They got indulged in conversations and solving bugs with the participants along with the volunteers. Our goal was to prepare them to create and structure their scenes so that they can implement AR the next day!

After showing them the scenes, objects, animations, they were given a task, to create advanced scenes with their imagination by the end of the day. It was a havoc after that! We had a lot of people working in teams, and trying to create new scenes which we hadn’t seen before. People were free to participate and win t-shirts, whoever makes the best one!

We wrapped up the session after that to leave for the guest house and change. After changing, and freshening up we all took a trip to the nearby famous Kamatibaug. I have been in Baroda for years, but even I hadn’t visited it, ever! I missed it this time as well since, I had to rest a bit. I met them straight for dinner, at the Food Street near the guesthouse after which Shahbaz Sir had some trouble sleeping, but Prathamesh Sir slept soundly, which is when me, Pratik, Shina and Shahbaz Sir talked for over an hour. We discussed a lot of tech with the Blockchain Speaker, and called it a day.

Day Three

We woke up and reached right on time to start with AR. I had the privilege to ride behind Shina(terrible and rash driver!). I took a sigh when we reached the venue and got on with it. We went on ahead with AR ToolKit and explained a couple of examples and that was it. The FootPrints Volunteers then distributed the certificates and we were free from that point of time.

Prathamesh Sir had planned to visit the Laxmi Vilas Palace of Vadodara, which strangely in the 5 years of my stay in the city, even I hadn’t visited once. We all visited the royal palace and went KFC for lunch which wasn’t good. If you’ve come this far in the blog, you probably think of me as a food critic by now. After a disapponting meal, we went to the nearest McDonald’s and ate so many Piri Piri Chicken McNuggets. If you haven’t tried those yet, please do! They’re amazing. Nobody except me had, and each and everyone was so happy after eating those. ^.^

After everything was done, Shina and Prathamesh had to leave for their flight to Pune from Ahmedabad so we got to the guesthouse and bid them goodbye. The rest of us stayed in and talked with wach other for a couple of hours after that, and then others left as well. Me, Pratik and Shahbaz Bhai were the only ones left, and I had promised to take him to eat Pancakes, which we did. After that, we went Juggernaut to watch Manchester United vs Chelsea’s streaming and Pratik was left stumped watching the passion of those 60-70 Manchester United fans in Baroda.

We left the cafe around 9PM and went ahead to one of my favorite restaurants in Vadodara, to eat Japani Fry. Pratik has lived for 21 years in thiscity but he had never heard of this restaurant or tried it, it was a pity. Shahbaz Bhai loved it, and I was really happy with the constant compliments coming my way since he was so delighted. He also mentioned that Prathamesh and Shina missed something really delicious, with which I completely agree.

We finished our dinner, walked a while to get ice cream and talked about Avenger vs Royal Enfield. Comment your choice! 😛

We reached the guesthouse and Pratik left for home, while me and Shahbaz Bhai had work to do which we finished, and he left at 2AM for his flight from Ahmedabad.

I hope tou enjoyed a 1000-1500 word Blog. Here are some pictures to look at and enjoy:

A-Frame is a web framework for building virtual reality experiences, making it easy for anyone to get involved with virtual reality. Its goal is to onboard developers into 3D and advance WebVR, an open platform for virtual reality that leverages the Web. Having more developers and content creators playing with WebVR is important for the future of virtual reality to help build towards a free and open virtual reality platform not owned by any individual entity.

A-Frame is used extensively by the Mozilla VR team to prototype and experiment with WebVR. Having more contributors know A-Frame will give them a chance to get involved in one of the most exciting revolutions in the field of technology.

DATE & TIME:

April 21, 2017 – 1400 to 1800 Hours.

VENUE:

Nirma University, Ahmedabad

ATTENDEES: 60 Students

PERSONAL NOTE

Campus Clubs is a major part of our DNA since that’s not just a way to get us contributors but also, it helps regular college students get more and more exposure towards new technologies and platforms through which they can connect with people who have gone through it and have reached a level higher. These Campus Clubs help us recognize talent and get us new contributors, and if not that, we find community builders and rockstars which MozNirma club has in abundance. They work quite well, and have quite an understanding and a vision towards building a better future for those around them.

Let’s not get away with words(A note for me!)

A WebVR event with A-Frame is what we had planned and I’d prepared myself for a smashing event since the word I’d gotten from previous mentors who had payed them a visit before were pretty impressed by their infrastructure and their knowledge. A mentor even asked me to be well prepared because they ask a lot of questions, adn I stood there confused, thinking about what should i really expect!? When they(MozNirma) needed someone to get them started with WebVR activities and they contacted Mehul who asked me if I could and since I was free, I went on with it!

The Uber dropped me at Nirma University gate and there were already posters of TedX Nirma University which made me feel that the crowd I’ll be facing would definitely compare me with the level of what’s coming to them later on. Jugal, from the core team came out to the gate to receive me and their campus is mighty good and clean! I’ve been to Nirma before, but that was four years ago and it looked emptier then but obviously, they’ve improved and looked good!

I went in and met the team, and I found them a peppy lot who are curious and want to do something with the resources that they have at hand. We waited for the participants to complete their classes and come in to get settled and discussed their previous events, vision, journey of Mozilla and they seemed more than interested.

We were interrupted by sixty people, not really! But, yeah, when you have so many people waiting for you, you can’t really just focus on just a single conversation.

Infront of me, sixty students, pin drop silence, which I don’t like, but there it was. I started talking, and they sat there with disciplined and listening to me. I asked them a few questions about Mozilla and VR and AR, to check what they know and what not. I had spoken for about 25-30 minutes and they were listening to me silently, which I felt was awkward, and they didn’t. I don’t know why! Maybe it’s because I’ve worked with kids lately, and they are very very very interactive. they have such bizarre ideas, and they blurt them out feeling in no way that they will be embarrassed but these were college students who were so conscious to open up. So, I did what do, I called up a singer from the bunch and made everyone sing Closer by Chainsmokers. Why?

Cause why the heck not?

It’s a workshop for like-minded people who are here to work on new technology which is open-source, it’s not a class. Okay, it might’ve gotten weird at some point, but it was either really fun or they lied to me! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Back to the topic, we proceeded and got more into technology and VR and devices.

We went on and answered the following questions:

How these Devices work?

What all hardware’s involved?

What all software’s involved?

Where does A-Frame enter?

What is WebGL?

How do these work?

Why HTML+CSS?

And a lot more!

We had answered all the Whats and Whys but we had to come to the How? because that’s what we were there to do! To learn how make new scenes on WebVR! We went on to how we can make new scenes and make use of the objects we have and how to manipulate them to make something new and kickass!

While doing all-of-it, none of us realized that only 19 minutes had left. So, we stopped there and revised what we’d learned by asking question and distributed swags for every right answer, and well, for every try.

We ended the session on a great note, and a conversation with amazing group pictures!

It’s great to see so many enthusiastic new developers entering the Virtual realm and that’s how the community will grow, and that is the way it should be!

I got a call from Mehul Patel on the 17th to check if I’m free on the 22nd since we’d discussed about increasing my involvement with the community-building and hence, he asked me to go to the Saffrony Institute of Technology and talk about Mozilla. I immediately agreed and it was for me and Moin Sir to go to Mehsana and spread awareness about us and build a platform for them to understand more and more about us and the community that we work in.

So, me and Moin Sir discussed the details and we were ready to give them an introduction about every field they could contribute in so that they could select one and start contributing in one or the other!

There were some last minute changes which led to the absence of Moin Sir and Sameer Bhatt, but we had Sumit Rajput and three other volunteers in our team. The team was:

Pranshu Khanna

Sumit Rajput

Akshay Koshti

Malav Shah

Darshit Shah

The Event Day

We decided to meet at the ST Bus Stand, Geeta Mandir at 8am and we did reach there but it turned out the bus was late. We discussed the proceedings there, and meanwhile the bus arrived. The bus ride went for another two hours in scorching heat and it was really hard to bare the heat!

We reached there and it was a shocker to us that it looked more of a cultural fest really with Gujarati Pop songs playing all along and people dancing around.

We finally got to the stall and it wasn’t covered, so we had to move it under the tree-shade. The volunteers were good enough to actually agree standing there with us for a while which I felt was really good of them!

We met a few people and told them about Mozilla and invited them to the workshop we were going to host for them during the Tech Fest.

As people came along, we explained them about Mozilla and the contribution areas and how awareness is important and the need of Web Literacy from a community standpoint.

We later on went to the workshop and explained them in detail about Mozilla, and moreover, about:

Web Literacy

21C Skills

Web Compatibility

Rust

WebVR

This was all we could discuss in the two hours we were given, so we completed that and left for the tiring journey back to Ahmedabad. We stood all the way back to Ahmedabad and finally got into our autos where we could finally rest a bit by sitting.

This was all about our hot and tiring journey to the VEYG’17!

This trip made me realize how important is it to reach out to areas where people are trying to get out of their shell but they haven’t been able to.and once we get them started, they have the potential to thrive!

Maker Fest is the Indian continuation of Maker Faire hosted across America, Europe, Africa and Japan. Maker Faire, which launched in California in 2006, now hosts hundreds of thousands attendees. It is the amalgamation of festivals celebrating the innovators and an art show with booths for inventors, demonstrations, and workshops for attendees.

Maker Fest is about developing a great maker community where people can learn and share about making. Creators, artists and hobbyist across the country are invited to present their contemporary applications of ideas using the vast ocean of art, science and technology.

We all know that Mozilla appreciates the maker community as well as the others because it believes in a co-existential society where we all here to live together and grow which makes the presence of Mozilla at an event if such magnitude an important one. The event itself was pretty diverse as people from arts to science and technology, each and every one of them are on a single stage and so has to be the team from Mozilla, open and diverse.

So the team gathered on the venue on the Sixth of January and each one of them introduced themselves as they cam into the hotel one by one from their flights, buses, trains or homes. It had been a long ride for each and one of them but all of them Mozillians were prepared to have work for and towards a common goal that is, to make people realize that the world is big enough for everyone to fit everyone in and we’re here to make it a better place.

The introductions were complete and the team started talking through the preparations and how we will proceed through the three-day period ahead of us and caught up on the details we were to emphasize on, the most. The sudden realization felt to the need of posters and that was it, the team started working right away! Got fresh, and thanks to the art work of Anubha Maneshwar, the resilience of Mansi Trivedi and coloring skills of Dhinakaran Vigneshwar, the team made hand-made covers in the hotel itself and were able to go and prep the stall later on.

The whole team was starving as most of them had skipped their lunches so, all of them were out to get some post-lunch. The team ordered Pav Bhaji(which had extra butter), Cheese Sandwich(which had extra cheese), Sev Puri(which the Maharashtra crowd didn’t find too spicy) and the coffee(which was too strong for a reason).

The team departed for the venue so as to each member of the team was excited to enjoy the inaugural proceedings, but it never really got to that! As soon as people saw the Mozilla boards going up, the team welcomed by a great crowd asking us about Open Source, Campus Clubs and everything. The whole team missed the inauguration ceremony due to the warm reception but ended up getting really tired with the overwhelming work each one of them had done through the day plus of course, the travel.

After the working part of the Day One ended, the locals Mansi, Mehul and Viral took them to a famous Ahmedabad Food Market, ManekChouk. The place is famous for various street food delicacies and the most famous dishes were ordered for them, Gwalia Dosa and the Chocolate Cheese Sandwich. The locals seemed fine after the dinner, but the rest of them were done with butter for the rest of their lives.

End of Day One.

Day Two.

The team reported at the venue, and before even setting up the crowd came in. Most of the team was busy setting up the stall while D. Vigneshwar handled the more technical crowd at the start, Mehul briefed the semi-technicals while Mansi approached the locals in Gujarati.

One such moment arrived when this kid dragged his other to the stall saying, “Mumma, Mozilla!” and she was stumped looking at her kid talking technology with our very own Mehul Patel. Check out a glimpse of it in the video below:

Campus Programs – Mansi did a great job in making people realize the need of a campus club as it’s an opportunity to learn and grow.

Rust – D. Vigneshwer’s role was to be an advocate and an developer evangelist to the people who were interested in this blazingly fast and highly safe system programming language which has an potential to re-innovate the web!

WebVR – Shahbaz took up responsibility to give a WebVR demo, all of the visitors were interested to try it out and had an new experience of the web.

Privacy Month – Vishal spread the awareness about Privacy and wanted the people to understand the immediate need of data protection.

The day ended so fast that neither one of the team realized until they got hungry. We had some pretty interesting food stalls at the venue itself, and the team had something or the other their too as to try out what they had to offer but the main course was at the Gordhan Thaal, which offered a delicious Unlimited Thali which all of the team members enjoyed.

After a delicious dinner, the team decided to visit the Flower Show at the Riverfront, Ahmedabad as it’s been pretty famous and as each one of them reached, they all could see the crowd coming their way which only meant one thing, it was closed. The team got late, without even realizing that it’s now 10pm. No regrets! The team was at the riverfront and enjoyed each other’s company at the riverfront and took pictures and enjoyed Ahmedabad’s cool breeze.

End of Day Two.

Day Three.

While the Day Two was hectic, and that’s what the team expecting on the third day as well, but it turned out to be more fun than any of them had thought. Some of the members were late, but the rest of the team handled their positions as well as the chemistry had grown too strong to know about what the other one was talking about as well. The Day Three proceeded fine and each one of the team members went on to check out other stalls as well.

By this time we had nicknames for each other, having fun around each other and this was for the whole gang. We changed into our Mozilla Activate gear for the final day and clicked a lot of pictures to made a lot of memories. Each one of us may or may not be technically skilled but we have one thing in common i.e., passion for One Web which for all of us and that showed that however different we are, we sure are compatible for the same reason.

The Maker Fest is an interesting place where like-minded people meet together to interact and develop each other and to celebrate the Maker Spirit and that’s was what it was, in the air. Making stuff from Balloons to Pottery, and from drones to simple robots. It was the perfect stage to bring all of us together.

The day was to end and many had to return to their normal lives and that’s how the Dominoes kept falling after Vishal left the team for his place right after the event. The rest of team had dinner at Tomato’s and ice-cream at Creamistry while remembering the jokes from what had been the most eventful event of the year yet(it had only been 8 days! :P).

I’m starting this new blog where you can keep track of all my expeditions. But, who am I?

I’m Pranshu Khanna!

I’m an undergrad student at BITS Edu Campus, Vadodara.

I code and work with hardware, I’m compatible with both of them.

Where do I work?

Well, I’m write for EssentiallySports and also working as an understudy for a writer. I’m a Firefox Student Ambassador and a Collabera Brand Ambassador.

Why am I important to you?

Maybe you can contact me to write some stuff for you, some online content or maybe even poems, your call! Or maybe if you want some information about the FSA program or you want an event to be organized at your college or maybe for an event I was a part of!